[vorbis-dev] The Oft Maligned comment field, initial thoughts.

[Ralph Giles]

On Sat, 17 Jun 2000, Gabriel Bouvigne wrote:

> > I'd rather see ISBN used as a standard identifier of "what CD this track
> > came from" since it's well, standard.  TRACKNUM or whatever would also
> > be nice.

> ISBN is International Serial Book Number, so of course it's required for a
> book, but I don't see why would it be required for a cd.

I'll have to ask my friends who work in retail, but having done a little
reading, I'm certain that what David was referring to is the UPC
(Universal Product Code). The number of digits is right (12 vs. 10) and
the checksums I tried came out correctly.

Books have these too, and they're often printed in a block with the ISBN
number on the back cover. Perhaps that's where the confusion arose?

They still make a reasonable index of course. They're unique (unless
they start with a 4) and can easily be mapped to the publisher (the first
6 digits are identify the manufacturer). Better yet, all the cds I checked
used some part of the upc code as their catalog number.

urls:
http://grover.mta.ca/upc/
http://www.deBarcode.com/
http://www.bowker.com/standards/home/isbn/us/isbnqa.html

 -r

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